Democrat Center Folds

It’s hardly been a secret that in recent years the moderate center of the Democratic Party has been driven away and what remains is a conglomeration of disparate blocs which, to date, the party has been able to treat as if there were no conflicting interests among them. As the midterm elections approach and the administration’s incompetence, along with the distaste for the president’s signature ObamaCare legislation, drive the party’s chances down further, the make-believe coalition of opposites may well crumble if the opposition doesn’t blow it.Democrats hope to retain control of the Senate and recapture the House by driving every possible favored bloc to the polls and coffers -- union members, single women, blacks, Jews, green energy advocates, and wealthy environmentalists. What is ignored is that a shred of opposition can take advantage of the far left sweep of the party to exploit serious differences between these voting blocs.

The Black vote is top on their list. To that end, Attorney General Holder and the president have been playing the race card so much you can tell from the worn back of the card where it is in the deck.

This week the president headlined the National Action Network convocation with Al Sharpton. Since so many Jewish voters get their news from media, which have airbrushed the fact that he instigated America’s first pogrom, let Weasel Zippers remind them:

. . . In July 1991, a controversy erupted when Leonard Jeffries, a professor at New York’s City College gave a speech blasting “rich Jews” for financing the slave trade and for controlling Hollywood so they could “put together a system of destruction for Black people.”

Sharpton rushed to defend Jeffries, and in the middle of the swirling controversy, declared, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

A day after Sharpton made that comment, in August 1991, a Jewish driver accidently ran over a 7-year old black boy named Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and an anti-Semitic riot broke out in which Jewish rabbinical scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death. Instead of calling for calm, Sharpton incited the rioters, leading marches in the streets that included chants of “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Kill the Jews!” At a funeral for the boy who had been run over, Sharpton said, “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights.” For those unfamiliar, “diamond merchants” was a thinly-veiled reference to Jewish jewelers.

After an investigation, no indictment was made of the driver who had accidently run over Cato, and he left for Israel. Sharpton flew there in an attempt to “hunt down” the driver and hand him a civil law suit. According to the Daily News, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, a woman spotted Sharpton and shouted, “Go to hell!” Sharpton yelled back: “I am in hell already. I am in Israel.”[/quote]

This man, Jewish voters, is treated as a national hero by the president for whom you overwhelmingly voted. You can mouth “never again” all you want, but if you continue to vote for the party which glorifies Sharpton, don’t be surprised to see that it will happen again and I, for one, will count you complicit when it does.

To blacks, Attorney General Holder and the president lie, claiming that they are the victims of discriminatory treatment and that efforts to reduce rampant vote fraud by requiring voter identification and clearing the rolls of dead or non-eligible voters is an attempt to disenfranchise them.

“And since the day I became Attorney General in 2009, I have been proud to stand alongside you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this Administration’s work.

I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms -- even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted ugly and divisive adversity. And if you don’t believe that, you look at the way …forget about me… forget about me, you look at the way the Attorney General of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee. Had nothing to do with me what Attorney General has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What President has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment. Last summer, after a narrowly split but divided Supreme Court struck down a key part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, my colleagues and I took action -- by challenging specific laws, in North Carolina and Texas, that could disproportionately restrict access to the ballot box among some populations.”

And now, direct from the most transparent administration ever…(drum roll)

“And since the day I became Attorney General in 2009, I have been proud to stand alongside you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this Administration’s work.

I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms – even in the face of unprecedented adversity. Last summer, after a narrowly split but divided Supreme Court struck down a key part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, my colleagues and I took action -- by challenging specific laws, in North Carolina and Texas, that could disproportionately restrict access to the ballot box among some populations.”

In any event, as the site notes, his treatment is no different than that meted out to prior attorneys general whose record was less deserving of harsh Hill treatment. “For the record, regarding that “unprecedented, unwarranted ugly and divisive adversity” directed at “the attorney general;” you’re kidding, right? I can think of a few of your predecessors who might agree with the “ugly, and divisive adversity” part based on their own contentious grilling by Congress. They would surely disagree on the “unprecedented” part however. John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and John Mitchell come immediately to mind, but I seem to recall Janet Reno was charged with contempt of Congress.”

Then there are the single women voters for whom the make-believe Republican “war on women” and their lady parts seemed so solid an issue -- although now that they know they are paying for Fluke’s contraceptives and healthcare for others instead of getting their healthcare free, that well might change.

The administration has apparently been peddling to gormless pundits that the president’s choice of a successor to the now-fired Secretary Sebelius, Sylvia Burwell, will hamstring Republicans passing on her confirmation because being hard on a young woman nominee will just feed into the Democrats “Republican War on Women” campaign . In the first place this ignores the fact that Sebelius, a woman, was handed an impossible task, was obviously promised she’d keep her position through November and then found herself ignored and then thrown under the bus by Obama, the ladies’ man. Secondly, the nomination hearings will begin in the summer months -- prior to the election in November, and as Ben Domenech observes, that schedule provides the Republicans with a “chance to force vulnerable Senate Democrats to take a hard vote six months before the midterms, and serves to disrupt what had been a positive few days of media spin for the health care law into another conversation about its many failings.”

Burwell is a political loyalist and a veteran of the shutdown fight with no record on health care, and will likely be coached to avoid answering questions about specific challenges with implementation at HHS. Senate Republicans actually have an advantage here in the wake of the Nuclear Option’s implementation: they can easily come up with a list of facts they claim the administration has hidden, details kicked aside, statutes ignored, and a host of other challenging questions on accountability over the implementation (and non-implementation) of the law. A list of every question Sebelius has dodged over the past several years would suffice. By demanding answers before the HHS nomination moves forward and refusing to rubber stamp the president’s pick, Republicans could force more vulnerable Democrats to take a vote that ties them both to the Nuclear Option and Obamacare six months before a critical election.

In other news that has to be frightening to vulnerable Democrats and provide further evidence of the pitfalls of having destroyed any Democrat center, the Laborers Union desirous of the jobs that Keystone pipeline would provide, sent a letter to the districts represented by 27 Democrats threatening voter retribution for their opposition to the pipeline. This smarts. I mean, do these pols need money from rich environmentalists more than they need money and votes from union members? They can’t seem to be assured of getting both anymore.

Makes one wonder when green energy supporters and animal lovers will come to blows.

A new report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finds that solar facilities in California are acting like “mega traps” that kill and injure birds. As a result, “entire food chains” are being disrupted.

USFWS’s National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory studied three solar farms in Southern California: Desert Sunlight, Genesis Solar and Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Two-hundred and thirty-three different birds from 71 species were found over the course of a two-year study.

Maybe someone should point this out to them. Maybe someone in Congress ought to be outraged that California farmers and farm workers are out of work, our food supply diminished, and the Central Valley is being impoverished to protect some smelt, that elsewhere critical energy projects are being halted for similar concerns about snail darters and such while the government looks the other way at windmills turning endangered birds into pâté and solar farms disrupting entire food chains. You cannot pretend to be for protecting endangered species and ecosystems and green energy and reasonably priced food at the same time., Well, you can, but if your opposition finally smartens up, you can’t get away with it for much longer.

It’s hardly been a secret that in recent years the moderate center of the Democratic Party has been driven away and what remains is a conglomeration of disparate blocs which, to date, the party has been able to treat as if there were no conflicting interests among them. As the midterm elections approach and the administration’s incompetence, along with the distaste for the president’s signature ObamaCare legislation, drive the party’s chances down further, the make-believe coalition of opposites may well crumble if the opposition doesn’t blow it.

Democrats hope to retain control of the Senate and recapture the House by driving every possible favored bloc to the polls and coffers -- union members, single women, blacks, Jews, green energy advocates, and wealthy environmentalists. What is ignored is that a shred of opposition can take advantage of the far left sweep of the party to exploit serious differences between these voting blocs.

The Black vote is top on their list. To that end, Attorney General Holder and the president have been playing the race card so much you can tell from the worn back of the card where it is in the deck.

This week the president headlined the National Action Network convocation with Al Sharpton. Since so many Jewish voters get their news from media, which have airbrushed the fact that he instigated America’s first pogrom, let Weasel Zippers remind them:

. . . In July 1991, a controversy erupted when Leonard Jeffries, a professor at New York’s City College gave a speech blasting “rich Jews” for financing the slave trade and for controlling Hollywood so they could “put together a system of destruction for Black people.”

Sharpton rushed to defend Jeffries, and in the middle of the swirling controversy, declared, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

A day after Sharpton made that comment, in August 1991, a Jewish driver accidently ran over a 7-year old black boy named Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and an anti-Semitic riot broke out in which Jewish rabbinical scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death. Instead of calling for calm, Sharpton incited the rioters, leading marches in the streets that included chants of “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Kill the Jews!” At a funeral for the boy who had been run over, Sharpton said, “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights.” For those unfamiliar, “diamond merchants” was a thinly-veiled reference to Jewish jewelers.

After an investigation, no indictment was made of the driver who had accidently run over Cato, and he left for Israel. Sharpton flew there in an attempt to “hunt down” the driver and hand him a civil law suit. According to the Daily News, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, a woman spotted Sharpton and shouted, “Go to hell!” Sharpton yelled back: “I am in hell already. I am in Israel.”[/quote]

This man, Jewish voters, is treated as a national hero by the president for whom you overwhelmingly voted. You can mouth “never again” all you want, but if you continue to vote for the party which glorifies Sharpton, don’t be surprised to see that it will happen again and I, for one, will count you complicit when it does.

To blacks, Attorney General Holder and the president lie, claiming that they are the victims of discriminatory treatment and that efforts to reduce rampant vote fraud by requiring voter identification and clearing the rolls of dead or non-eligible voters is an attempt to disenfranchise them.

“And since the day I became Attorney General in 2009, I have been proud to stand alongside you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this Administration’s work.

I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms -- even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted ugly and divisive adversity. And if you don’t believe that, you look at the way …forget about me… forget about me, you look at the way the Attorney General of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee. Had nothing to do with me what Attorney General has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What President has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment. Last summer, after a narrowly split but divided Supreme Court struck down a key part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, my colleagues and I took action -- by challenging specific laws, in North Carolina and Texas, that could disproportionately restrict access to the ballot box among some populations.”

And now, direct from the most transparent administration ever…(drum roll)

“And since the day I became Attorney General in 2009, I have been proud to stand alongside you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this Administration’s work.

I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms – even in the face of unprecedented adversity. Last summer, after a narrowly split but divided Supreme Court struck down a key part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, my colleagues and I took action -- by challenging specific laws, in North Carolina and Texas, that could disproportionately restrict access to the ballot box among some populations.”

In any event, as the site notes, his treatment is no different than that meted out to prior attorneys general whose record was less deserving of harsh Hill treatment. “For the record, regarding that “unprecedented, unwarranted ugly and divisive adversity” directed at “the attorney general;” you’re kidding, right? I can think of a few of your predecessors who might agree with the “ugly, and divisive adversity” part based on their own contentious grilling by Congress. They would surely disagree on the “unprecedented” part however. John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and John Mitchell come immediately to mind, but I seem to recall Janet Reno was charged with contempt of Congress.”

Then there are the single women voters for whom the make-believe Republican “war on women” and their lady parts seemed so solid an issue -- although now that they know they are paying for Fluke’s contraceptives and healthcare for others instead of getting their healthcare free, that well might change.

The administration has apparently been peddling to gormless pundits that the president’s choice of a successor to the now-fired Secretary Sebelius, Sylvia Burwell, will hamstring Republicans passing on her confirmation because being hard on a young woman nominee will just feed into the Democrats “Republican War on Women” campaign . In the first place this ignores the fact that Sebelius, a woman, was handed an impossible task, was obviously promised she’d keep her position through November and then found herself ignored and then thrown under the bus by Obama, the ladies’ man. Secondly, the nomination hearings will begin in the summer months -- prior to the election in November, and as Ben Domenech observes, that schedule provides the Republicans with a “chance to force vulnerable Senate Democrats to take a hard vote six months before the midterms, and serves to disrupt what had been a positive few days of media spin for the health care law into another conversation about its many failings.”

Burwell is a political loyalist and a veteran of the shutdown fight with no record on health care, and will likely be coached to avoid answering questions about specific challenges with implementation at HHS. Senate Republicans actually have an advantage here in the wake of the Nuclear Option’s implementation: they can easily come up with a list of facts they claim the administration has hidden, details kicked aside, statutes ignored, and a host of other challenging questions on accountability over the implementation (and non-implementation) of the law. A list of every question Sebelius has dodged over the past several years would suffice. By demanding answers before the HHS nomination moves forward and refusing to rubber stamp the president’s pick, Republicans could force more vulnerable Democrats to take a vote that ties them both to the Nuclear Option and Obamacare six months before a critical election.

In other news that has to be frightening to vulnerable Democrats and provide further evidence of the pitfalls of having destroyed any Democrat center, the Laborers Union desirous of the jobs that Keystone pipeline would provide, sent a letter to the districts represented by 27 Democrats threatening voter retribution for their opposition to the pipeline. This smarts. I mean, do these pols need money from rich environmentalists more than they need money and votes from union members? They can’t seem to be assured of getting both anymore.

Makes one wonder when green energy supporters and animal lovers will come to blows.

A new report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finds that solar facilities in California are acting like “mega traps” that kill and injure birds. As a result, “entire food chains” are being disrupted.

USFWS’s National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory studied three solar farms in Southern California: Desert Sunlight, Genesis Solar and Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Two-hundred and thirty-three different birds from 71 species were found over the course of a two-year study.

Maybe someone should point this out to them. Maybe someone in Congress ought to be outraged that California farmers and farm workers are out of work, our food supply diminished, and the Central Valley is being impoverished to protect some smelt, that elsewhere critical energy projects are being halted for similar concerns about snail darters and such while the government looks the other way at windmills turning endangered birds into pâté and solar farms disrupting entire food chains. You cannot pretend to be for protecting endangered species and ecosystems and green energy and reasonably priced food at the same time., Well, you can, but if your opposition finally smartens up, you can’t get away with it for much longer.